Bosnia-Herzegovina and the European Union: Strong European Identity in Spite of Scepticism
Introduction Bosnia-Herzegovina and the European Union: where do we stand? In March 2000 Bosnia-Herzegovina (BiH) received a Road Map with 18 key conditions that needed to be fulfilled in order to develop a feasibility study necessary for the start of the Agreement of Stabilisation and Association Process (SAP) in December 2002. In October 2005 the European Commission announced that the Road Map conditions had been fulfilled. The Commission recommended the opening of negotiations on the Stabilisation and Association Agreement (SAA) after BiH had fulfilled 16 of the conditions. The official negotiations started on November 25 2005. The SAA was finally signed on June 16 2008 in Luxembourg. The main goal of the SAA is the accession of Bosnia-Herzegovina to the EU in a period of six to ten years. In 2008 the process the visa liberalisation started and since December 2010 citizens of BiH can travel without visas to all Schengen states. As a precondition for this, the BiH government had to fulfil 174 technical conditions, the main condition being the introduction of biometric passports.